34. Las Vegas Trip: Hoover Dam (What to do outside Las Vegas)

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Members earn on every purchase except gift card, services and fees at Macy's, Macy's backstage and market by Macy's More at Macy's dot Com. Slash Star rewards savings off sailing curiance prices. Exclusions apply. Johnny mc and travel is back. We are at the Hoover Dam. I just drove down Interesting eleven from Las Vegas to the Hoover Dam. It was a beautiful overlook overlooking Lake Mead. I pulled in. I couldn't get a parking spot, so I just got a double parked and took that in for thirty seconds. I'm driving into Hoover Dam. Now my goal is to find the parking lot that Wayte told me about. Now a surprised, I guess it makes sense. There was pretty thorough security to get in here, super easy, super friendly. But I did have to pull over and they didn't want to search the trunk. No problem. All right, I've found here Bridge Scenic View. I'm gonna come over here and check out Bridge Scenic View. This parking lot looks pretty full, Oh I see, and we're gonna walk up a bunch of switchbacks. All right, this looks awesome. Turn right, then turned right. I think the challenge here is going to be can I find parking? Let's see. Welcome to the Michael Callahan, Pat Tillman, Memorial Bridge Plaza and here visitor amenities. All right, this looks fun. Like I said, the hardest part is going to be parking. But people are coming and going and it's pretty civilized. People aren't scumbagging over parking spots. So that's nice. Day. In front of me just got his. I am next up, so I'll just do a quick loop here and hope to get lucky. Yeah, somebody's coming out. And this worked out just fine. And like a lot of my trips, this was an unplanned stop. Right on Memorial Bridge Plaza Road, then turn right on Uber Damn Access Road. All right, we're bringing warned, says The desert and bridge are rocky places, so we're being warned. Walking up something that once again looks like the Gorn is about to attack you. I'm not even entirely sure when I'm at, but parking was free, and this looks cool. Trying to be good with my mask, but very tiring walking up with these hills. I still don't know what I'm actually at. Seemed to be in the pedestrian walkway of a highway bridge. You can definitely hit a card whatever it is. I'm not the only one. A lot of people walking too. Oh my left, there's the dam. Now it's stunning is and I'm a big climate emergency guy. You can see the white of the rocks and how far the water has nipped down. Wow, really stunning. The two tone color of the rocks absolutely stunning. So it looks like if I go back, I'll be able to drive over the dam. I was heading for some sort of parking garage. I'm not sure I'm gonna need it, but us I didn't plan this trip, so who knows. I'm gonna come to the middle here and take some pictures. So I feel like from this high up it's hard to get a sense of how just huge the dam is. But if I eyeball a car driving across the top and compare it to the dam, oh yeah, it's big. So this highway bridge really is elevated. We're well above the damn you're looking down on the dam, and I'm gonna just walk all the way across this bridge. I don't know what happens, but hey, I'm here right, Just a magnificent piece of architecture. Something I would highly recommend you do if you're out this way. The slot machines will wait for you. Looks like this bridge is just gonna dead end when I get to the end of it. Keep that in mind. If you come up this way, I'm still gonna walk to the end. See what happens. Yeah, there's just a concrete barrier here. But it's a big, beautiful world, and there are a lot of places you only come this way once, and this is probably one of those. Even if I make it back to Hoover Dam, I'll know there's no reason to walk to the end of the bridge and only come this way once. But I'm gonna touch it for posterity if I want to hop This looks like there's a gravel trail, but there's a big, large concrete barrier. They clearly don't want you to do that. So heading back now. Oh, now that I've turned around, and now that Hoover Dam is on my right, it was on the left previously. Now I see the parking garage, and I guess that's if you want to walk across the dam. I'll drive down there. I'll drive a cross it and see if that's something I need to add on. I am fighting sunset. Sunsets around five thirty it's two o'clock and I do want to spend some time at Lake Mead. Part of the challenge of all these travels is you always have to make such decisions. You can't do everything, so what can you do? But I'll drive down there and I'll make that decision. Then I'll tell you I cannot get enough for this clean desert air. You can see forever. It just under the lungs. It just feels great. It's also just a crispness to the lights without all the haze and a pollution or whatever else we have back east. It just everything just seems sharp. It's like you get seat better. I'm looking at all the cliffs on the side of the damn now it's just gorgeous. You can see all the detail and the jagget edges of the rock as I head back. Now, when I headed out this was my back was turned to this show. Now I'm seeing the big welcome to Nevada signs, so that makes a lot of sense. So I'm back in the park a lot now, getting back in the car, and when I can't figure out I was only up there twenty minutes this lot that Remember, I had to wait for a spot, it's like half empty. Also did some research on the way down. So when I was a kid, I would use my imagination. I used to love those Rand McNally maps, and I would just look at them and imagine myself going places. So I feel pretty versed in the interstate highway system. And I was driving down here, I'm like Interstate eleven. I don't remember there being an Interstate eleven. So apparently Interstate eleven opened in twenty seventeen, and the bridge that I just crossed was built in twenty ten, so that all makes sense. The bridge was built to bypass the scenic route, which is the one over the dam, which used to have tons of backups. Which seeing this, you know it's a one lane in each direction kind of road over a dam. You can't build an eight lane super highway over dam. So I could see where this would have really backed up back in the day. And the Interstate eleven bypass and the Pat Tilman Bridge solves all that. So I'm gonna get back in the car here and drive across the dam, all right. Made it right out of the parking lot, speed them twenty five down a winding road past. You know it's Hoover Dam as electrical generator, and you can see all the infrastructure that goes with that. Something called railroad trail is off to the left, and now coming down the hill reduced speed ahead, and we are about to drive across the dam. Wow, I'm looking up at where I just was. Holy Cow. We were pretty high up. Wow. I've only been driving about a minute. I can't believe the elevation difference between where I was and where I am now. Holy Cow. I can't imagine what kind of traffic there must have been on the dam back in the day. Here is that parking garage I originally set out for. I don't think I'm going to do it. This is one of those driving situations where you have to keep your eye on the road, the opposing traffic, the pedestrians, and of course you're an idiot in your podcasting. I just stopped for some pedestrians A good thing too. There are two cops sitting there on my left, but I'm a courteous individual. If you use a crosswalk, I'll let you cross. I see here on the other side, some cars pulled in. I wonder if you can just kind of park there on the Arizona side and walk back. Oh yeah, time zones. I'm about to cross into Central time. I guess I've already done that in the podcast. So it's three o'clock in my car, and now it's three o two, and now it is four o two. Welcome back to Arizona, my friends, Arizona, the Grand Canyon State welcomes you. Here's some more parking on the left. This might be some sort of overlook. I'm gonna pull in here. Who's not a space here? I excited. I got into space because people didn't do the best job parking. But I can squeeze in here. Oh and this is probably gonna allow me to walk down to the damn All right, let's do it. I have found some sort of walking path which I think will take me to footbridge to walk across the dam. So I am here. There's spillways. If the water would be super high so it wouldn't press up against the dam, would come to these side spillways and kind of bypass the dam. But the water level now we're even close to even thinking about using the spillway. If you see water flowing in the spillway, you are witnessing an historic event. The last time the waters the Colorado River flowed through this spill, it was a nineteen eighty three Ronald Reagan was president. In Gasoline costs ninety three cents a gallon. It's the only time it's been needed. So I'm making my way now to the Hoover Dam. Proper fair amount of people Friday afternoon, three o'clock four o'clock, depending on which the side of the time zone you're on. Right now, it's a four o'clock where I am, but I'm about to cross back over. I'm laughing at the towers with saying, Arizona time I've had a time, should walk along the pedestrian walk away here the barrier only about belly button high. Really surprised, there's not. It was safety events or something. I'm getting to kick out of. Stupid, But walking back and forth between two time zones and two states corrects me up. Fun fact. Surprising fact. There's a restroom on the dam. I have a question where does the waste go? So the gift shop was cool, definitely worth the stop. I got my mom a patch. She flects patches and puts them on her denim jacket. So I got her a Hoover damn one to match the one from the other day from Death Valley. So I'm making my way back now towards Arizona in the car. Hey dogs, Hi, I'll be your friend. You're beautiful. Enjoy your day. Dogs. So it's so weird, Just like when I was up on the Tilman Bridge, the crowd has thamed out. It's like I'm twenty minutes behind a giant pack of people. Anyway, walking back to Arizona and the car. Gonna walk on the other side this time, I'll walk on the lower water side. I guess that would be the front of the dam. I'm gonna need to find a crosswalk. We'll see if other people is courteous. As I was doing the crosswalk, didn't need anyone to stop. There was no one there. So we'll see what the view is on this side and get a good photoshot of the curve. You can much more get a sense of the size of this thing on this side. Wow, it looks like there's a nice scenic road over there. I'm starting to worry about daylight because I have some other things I want to do on this trip. Here's the men's restroom on the day, I'm going to pause the recording and we're unpaused. I can now say, Pete on the hoover damn too much information, Johnny mac. Can one of you google Hoover Damn sewage treatment because I have some questions and welcome back to Arizona. I think I'm gonna leave you here. I'd like to keep these episodes short and head back to the car. And the next episode you hear me drive into Arizona a little bit and then I'm gonna take the scenic route back along Lake Mead plus your minus. Since set it's three thirty Pacific times, I've got two hours of daylight. Should be able to accomplish a lot in that time. Follow the show on Apple podcast a, Google Spotify where we get your shows. Travel is back from the Uver dam See next time. M